Volta
Person1842 – 1918

Abdulhamid II

Also called: Abdul Hamid II, Abdülhamid II

Ottoman sultan (1876–1909) who granted a constitution, soon suspended it and ruled as an autocrat for thirty years

Coming to the throne in 1876, he proclaimed a constitution but dissolved parliament in 1878 and ruled through secret police and censorship. He tried to bind the empire together with Pan-Islamism, stressing his role as caliph, and extended the Hejaz Railway, the telegraph and modern schools. The massacres of Armenians in the 1890s earned him the name "Red Sultan" in the West. He drew close to Germany, granting it the Baghdad Railway concession, and was deposed by the Young Turks in 1909.

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3 related events

  1. 1
    1876 – 1878Ottoman Constitution of 1876 (Midhat Constitution)monarch

    The Ottoman constitution drafted by the reforming grand vizier Midhat Pasha was proclaimed and a parliament met. But the sultan soon suspended both, using the Russo-Turkish War as a pretext.

  2. 2
    1877 – 1878Russo-Turkish War and the Congress of Berlinmonarch

    Russia defeated the Ottoman Empire in the name of the Balkan Slavs, but at the Congress of Berlin, called because Britain and Austria objected, its southward advance was checked again.

  3. 3
    1908 – 1909Young Turk Revolutionmonarch

    Young officers and intellectuals of the Committee of Union and Progress rose and forced Sultan Abdulhamid II to restore the Midhat constitution. The next year they deposed him.

People who appear alongside

  • Midhat Pasha1822 – 1884

    Ottoman reforming statesman and grand vizier who drafted the Ottoman constitution of 1876 (the Midhat constitution)

  • Otto von Bismarck1815 – 1898

    Minister-president of Prussia (1862–1890) and first chancellor of the German Empire (1871–1890) who unified Germany through three wars by his policy of “blood and iron”

  • Alexander II of Russia1818 – 1881

    Emperor of Russia (1855–1881) who, after defeat in the Crimean War, emancipated the serfs and pursued reform from above, but was assassinated by revolutionaries

Themes this person appears in

  • Imperialism and the Partition of the World1839 – 1914

    From the Tanzimat to Sarajevo — seventy-five years in which the powers carved up West Asia, India, Southeast Asia, Africa and the Pacific, and the peoples there answered with reform and resistance